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I'm spinning this off of the Dickwolves thread, because this discussion is a lot bigger than even Penny Arcade.

Alternate title is "Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Rape But Knew You’d Be An Asshole If You’d Ask"

If there's anywhere on the whole of the internets where there can be a rational discussion of this, I trust it to be here so if you have genuine questions, don't be afraid to speak up. And to get the whole "anyone who supports rape culture must be a monster" thing out of the way, I wrote this in the other thread:

When I choose to wear sneakers instead of cute shoes on a night out, because you never know when you might have to run or fight, I'm supporting rape culture because I'm making the assumption that a rape attempt is an everyday, common event that I need to plan for. When I shake my head at a news story about a drunk woman being assaulted in a stranger's car, I'm perpetuating rape culture by thinking that only women who make bad decisions get raped. When hear a guy in a bar call his girlfriend a stupid whore and don't intervene because I don't want him to beat me up, I'm supporting rape culture because I'm allowing him to think that acting that way, even in public, is acceptable and that people around him support his actions.

Rape culture isn't about people going around saying "yay rape!" It's about acting like sexual violence is a common and normal part of society, and making comments and decisions that reinforce that.

In a teeny-tiny nutshell, rape culture is a phrase used in social science to describe an environment where sexual violence (against any gender) is normalized, considered commonplace, and sometimes glorified.

The outer boundaries of the concept of rape culture are where people get into giant arguments about it, but you can read a good, non-politicized definition here.

Examples of Rape Culture:

Blaming the victim (“She asked for it!”)
Trivializing sexual assault (“Boys will be boys!”)
Sexually explicit jokes
Tolerance of sexual harassment
Inflating false rape report statistics
Publicly scrutinizing a victim’s dress, mental state, motives, and history
Gratuitous gendered violence in movies and television
Defining “manhood” as dominant and sexually aggressive
Defining “womanhood” as submissive and sexually passive
Pressure on men to “score”
Pressure on women to not appear “cold”
Assuming only promiscuous women get raped
Assuming that men don’t get raped or that only “weak” men get raped
Refusing to take rape accusations seriously
Teaching women to avoid getting raped instead of teaching men not to rape

How can men and women combat Rape Culture?

Avoid using language that objectifies or degrades women
Speak out if you hear someone else making an offensive joke or trivializing rape
If a friend says she has been raped, take her seriously and be supportive
Think critically about the media’s messages about women, men, relationships, and violence
Be respectful of others’ physical space even in casual situations
Always communicate with sexual partners and do not assume consent
Define your own manhood or womanhood. Do not let stereotypes shape your actions.
Get involved! Join a student or community group working to end violence against women.

Rape is a crime about power, not sex. It might be educational for a rapist to understand what it is like to be truly powerless and violated.

Many of them do. People who have been raped, also rape. If you already feel powerless and violated, being able to project those feelings outward onto someone else are a way to be relieved of them, temporarily.

It is all well and good talking about changing culture. Considering most rape statutes include groping, it seems to me the culture calls this a crime already; the maximum level of decrying an action.

I do not happen too think it is reasonable to expect a world or a country where sexual assaults or harassment never happens ever let alone within my life time. Now for 12 months from now, the ESA can make substantial strides in surveillance, security presence, ejections, and contacting the police. I also have to wonder if the ESA or their security might have run afoul of California's mandatory reporting laws.

I do not expect a world without crime, or a world without a particular sort of crime.

Now, what is a problem is that if someone went to security at E3 and said someone had just stabbed someone, I suspect there would have been action. Lack of confidence in reporting is a problem. But so is not reporting. Get these turds on camera, in court, and on the registry. You have one less pervert at E3 next year. And if the ESA is not providing the security to keep people safe from assaults, that is a major issue.

Rape is a crime about power, not sex. It might be educational for a rapist to understand what it is like to be truly powerless and violated.

Many of them do. People who have been raped, also rape. If you already feel powerless and violated, being able to project those feelings outward onto someone else are a way to be relieved of them, temporarily.

KingGorilla wrote:

It is all well and good talking about changing culture. Considering most rape statutes include groping, it seems to me the culture calls this a crime already; the maximum level of decrying an action.

I do not happen to think it is reasonable to expect a world or a country where sexual assaults or harassment never happens ever let alone within my life time. Now for 12 months from now, the ESA can make substantial strides in surveillance, security presence, ejections, and contacting the police. I also have to wonder if the ESA or their security might have run afoul of California's mandatory reporting laws.

I do not expect a world without crime, or a world without a particular sort of crime.

I don't think this is about an expectation that we will live in a world without a particular sort of crime. It's about living in a world where a certain kind of crime is reduced from the massive levels we have today down to a level that's a little less ridiculous. It's been a few years since this first made the rounds so I don't know what the status of it is now as far as the research, but for instance there's Predator Theory:

Predator Theory is the theory that acquaintance rape as we know it is overwhelmingly caused by a relatively narrow portion of recidivist undetected rapists in the population, each of whom will have several victims, and that these rapists select targets based on the likelihood that they can rape without meaningful consequence, and favor alcohol and avoid overt force as tools to defeat resistance for just this reason.http://www.feministe.us/blog/archive...

Now, what is a problem is that if someone went to security at E3 and said someone had just stabbed someone, I suspect there would have been action. Lack of confidence in reporting is a problem. But so is not reporting. Get these turds on camera, in court, and on the registry. You have one less pervert at E3 next year. And if the ESA is not providing the security to keep people safe from assaults, that is a major issue.

Coincidentally enough, there was just an article outlining how the behavior of cops and prosecutors is the problem, not the reporting (I wonder if it's the same Lisak in both studies):

But science is telling us that our suspicions of victims, the ones that seem like common sense, are flat-out baseless. A number of recent studies on neurobiology and trauma show that the ways in which the brain processes harrowing events accounts for victim behavior that often confounds cops, prosecutors, and juries.

These findings have led to a fundamental shift in the way experts who grasp the new science view the investigation of rape cases—and led them to a better method for interviewing victims. The problem is that the country’s 18,000 law enforcement agencies haven’t been converted. Or at least, most aren’t yet receiving the training to improve their own interview procedures.http://www.slate.com/articles/news_a...

Scrolling way back, I mentioned the need in the system for specific advocates for victims. I do not think that this is an area that police and prosecutors can or should be involved in for many reasons. Firstly, cops are paid to make arrests and prosecutors are paid to win cases-that's about it. You job as a prosecutor is hanging on your ability to convict people. Police are paid to make good arrests.

Police and prosecutors grill witnesses, because their job depends on it. Most police departments most prosecutor's offices are small. The majority of police departments in the US, close to 70 percent last I saw had fewer than 24 sworn officers, with about half of all departments with ten or fewer sworn officers. Prosecutor offices are worked hard, big case loads in big cities, and extremely diverse loads in small areas. I am not sure if they have the resources to give specialized training to be counsellors as well as cops and attorneys. I am also not sure if we want them losing their skepticism-less than 10 percent of rapes are falsely reported. But one false arrest on the information from a false claim can lead to a civil suit to ruin a city. For a sex crime, where the person may have been all over the news as a rapist, that is going to happen.

But, I do not see it unreasonable to have victim's advocates, not unlike how we have child advocates. I think you can shake loose the tree of cash salad to do this. But it has to be state by state, there are some Federal programs but rape cases are exceedingly rare in federal courts.

A big impedence to what crime victims in general need, what those who have been raped or sexually assaulted need is the constitution and our federalism. Australia was able to pass sweeping reforms a few years ago. In the US we either need a constitutional amendment, and some have been proposed, or we need 51 different reforms. The right of the accused to confront a victim is directly antithetical to their recovery, no question, but our constitution does not afford rights to victims, it affords the rights to those who stand accused. Courts continue to grapple with whether you compel a victim or rape to testify, based on the accuse'd rights to do so. If the victim is not in an emotional state to testify, if she cannot stand up to rigorous cross examination, she does not take the stand-it might be a mistrial for denying the defendant his rights. In one case out of Cook County in Illinois, the jury acquitted because that allowed the defense attorney opportunity to add doubts. Another in Cook, the judge ruled that a video tape of the sexual act was admissible and as such the girl did not have to take the stand. I wonder, in this latter case what would have happened if the young men were convicted and later appealed.

That second article escalates so quickly. The shortcomings in ongoing training, in certain qualifications in officers is not a part of rape culture, it is a matter of budgets, a matter that civil service gives greater weight to military service. Those cops, as I said, are trained to arrest people and gather evidence, that is all.

Those cops, as I said, are trained to arrest people and gather evidence, that is all.

That's the whole point: the way they've been trained to gather evidence is faulty. This is not just about 'advocating' for victims, this is about improving the job police do of gathering evidence and how prosecutors use that evidence.

That article was about investigators, prosecutors, and juries believing the victims. That is advocacy, that is not investigation. It gets very dangerous when a police officer or an attorney loses their suspicion. In a criminal proceeding, there is also someone whose job it is to make the jury not believe the victim, to challenge the evidence. If you do not coach your witness to handle that onslaught, you are not going in prepared.

I know the statistics on how rare false rape accusations are. Statistics are not admissible evidence. Even if there were never a false accusation in the past 50 years, the defense attorney can raise it, and the prosecution needs to be prepared for it.

Getting to the fact of predatory rape, of how it is most common for a woman to be sexually assaulted by someone they know; these are one witness crimes. In the off chance that the defendant testifies, 2 witnesses with 2 stories. There is probably no recoverable DNA because that is exceptionally rare(Juries hate it when there is no DNA or recoverable DNA or fingerprints). Witnesses, victim witnesses, on the stand that waver, that recant an aspect of a story, that have an inconsistency will get torn to shreds by the other side.

And we get back to the grander, from the constitution down, issue. The adverserial, America, criminal justice system is a terrible place to be a victim of rape. The man who assaulted you has all of the rights. You will have to take the stand and be grilled, look at his smug face, in order to put him in prison and get protection from him.

Is rape different from any other crime? Absolutely. The system does not make special exceptions or changes to rules of evidence, to procedure, to constitutional rights depending on the crimes.

Have a look at what Australia did. The laws are in the appendices. One that I like, and might even be constitutional in the US at present-Australia affords crime victims a right to appeal an acquittal.

But on the whole, this was a huge endeavor to reform Australia's common law based criminal system.

That article was about investigators, prosecutors, and juries believing the victims. That is advocacy, that is not investigation.

No, it was about how police handle the gathering of evidence--testimonial, not physical, but evidence nevertheless:

In contrast, police officers with no specialized training often antagonize victims as they zero in on discrepancies. It’s understandable: Cops learn to interview victims based on interrogation practices, which emphasize establishing a timeline and key facts. But what may seem like good police work, Lisak says, can lead a detective to press victims in a way that yields misleading or false information, as they prematurely try to piece together fragmented memories.

Cops must also learn that trauma influences victims in ways law enforcement won’t necessarily understand. One notorious example is victims’ flat affect. This always puzzled senior officer Holly Whillock, a 13-year veteran of the Houston Police Department. She expected victims to be enraged or visibly anguished, but instead they spoke coolly, without emotion.

It gets very dangerous when a police officer or an attorney loses their suspicion.

It's not losing suspicion. It's about realizing that some of the usual reasons to be suspicious don't apply to a rape case.

In a criminal proceeding, there is also someone whose job it is to make the jury not believe the victim, to challenge the evidence. If you do not coach your witness to handle that onslaught, you are not going in prepared.

This is not just about not preparing a witness. This is also about cops doing the initial investigation and prosecutors making decisions prior to the point where you begin preparing witnesses. As for the criminal proceeding, this is about having a counter-challenge of your own for when someone challenges the evidence.

I know the statistics on how rare false rape accusations are. Statistics are not admissible evidence. Even if there were never a false accusation in the past 50 years, the defense attorney can raise it, and the prosecution needs to be prepared for it.

Getting to the fact of predatory rape, of how it is most common for a woman to be sexually assaulted by someone they know; these are one witness crimes. In the off chance that the defendant testifies, 2 witnesses with 2 stories. There is probably no recoverable DNA because that is exceptionally rare(Juries hate it when there is no DNA or recoverable DNA or fingerprints). Witnesses, victim witnesses, on the stand that waver, that recant an aspect of a story, that have an inconsistency will get torn to shreds by the other side.

And we get back to the grander, from the constitution down, issue. The adverserial, America, criminal justice system is a terrible place to be a victim of rape. The man who assaulted you has all of the rights. You will have to take the stand and be grilled, look at his smug face, in order to put him in prison and get protection from him.

Is rape different from any other crime? Absolutely. The system does not make special exceptions or changes to rules of evidence, to procedure, to constitutional rights depending on the crimes.

Have a look at what Australia did. The laws are in the appendices. One that I like, and might even be constitutional in the US at present-Australia affords crime victims a right to appeal an acquittal.

But on the whole, this was a huge endeavor to reform Australia's common law based criminal system.

Sure, but none of that diminishes the fact that if cops do a better job of evidence gathering, prosecutors have additional explanations to convince juries with, and both of them realize that the type of suspicion they have in other cases is not always appropriate in a rape case, this can make rape prosecutions better.

You brought up the specter of a civil suit before, and there's the problem of too MUCH suspicion:

Despite physical evidence that supported her story that a stranger had bound, gagged, raped and photographed her in 2008 in the transitional housing apartment in which she was living, an 18-year-old Washington state woman was disbelieved.

Pressured by police into recanting, she was criminally charged for making a false rape report in the Lynnwood case and, the woman says, forced to publicly admit, at a group meeting for Cocoon House participants, that she had lied about being raped. If she hadn't done so, she says, she was afraid she would lose her housing under a federally funded shelter program for young adults who had formerly been in foster care.

But the tide turned when Marc O'Leary, a former Washington state resident, was arrested several years later in Colorado and accused of committing a sexual assault there. In his possession were photos of the young woman and her identification card. O’Leary subsequently admitted he had raped her, and was convicted of that crime after Lynnwood police reopened their investigation. O'Leary was also convicted of three rapes in Colorado and another in Washington state, according to Courthouse News and the Seattle Times, and is serving a 327-year prison sentence in Colorado.

Now the woman has filed a lawsuit in federal court in Seattle, seeking compensatory and punitive damages for alleged civil rights violations, defamation and negligence.http://www.abajournal.com/news/artic...

When Tom Tremblay started working for the police department of Burlington, Vt., 30 years ago, he discovered that many of his fellow cops rarely believed a rape victim. This was true time after time, in dozens of cases. Tremblay could see why they were doubtful once he started interviewing the victims himself. The victims, most of them women, often had trouble recalling an attack or couldn’t give a chronological account of it. Some expressed no emotion. Others smiled or laughed as they described being assaulted. “Unlike any other crime I responded to in my career, there was always this thought that a rape report was a false report,” says Tremblay, who was an investigator in Burlington’s sex crimes unit. “I was always bothered by the fact there was this shroud of doubt.”

There’s no “evidence” of a “rape culture” in this country. I’ve never wanted to rape anyone, so why am I being lumped in as the enemy? If these bloggers and feminists make “rape jokes” taboo, or “rape” as a subject off-limits no matter what the approach, then it’ll just lead to more censorship.

They sure sound familiar to me because I, at various points, was saying them. Either out loud, or to myself, or to other comedian and non-comedian friends when we would argue about this. I had my viewpoint, and it was based on solid experience, and it…was…f*cking…wrong.

Let’s go backwards through those bullsh*t conclusions, shall we? First off: no one is trying to make rape, as a subject, off-limits. No one is talking about censorship. In this past week of re-reading the blogs, going through the comment threads, and re-scrolling the Twitter arguments, I haven’t once found a single statement, feminist or otherwise, saying that rape shouldn’t be joked under any circumstance, regardless of context. Not one example of this.

In fact, every viewpoint I’ve read on this, especially from feminists, is simply asking to kick upward, to think twice about who is the target of the punchline, and make sure it isn’t the victim.

Why, after all of my years of striving to write original material (and, at times, becoming annoyingly self-righteous about it) and struggling find new viewpoints or untried approaches to any subject, did I suddenly balk and protest when an articulate, intelligent and, at times, angry contingent of people were asking my to apply the same principles to the subject of rape? Any edgy or taboo subject can become just as hackneyed as an acceptable or non-controversial one if the exact same approach is made every time. But I wasn’t willing to hear that.

And let’s go back even further. I’ve never wanted to rape anyone. Never had the impulse. So why was I feeling like I was being lumped in with those who were, or who took a cavalier attitude about rape, or even made rape jokes to begin with? Why did I feel some massive, undeserved sense of injustice about my place in this whole controversy?

The answer to that is in the first incorrect assumption. The one that says there’s no a “rape culture” in this country. How can there be? I’ve never wanted to rape anyone.

Do you see the illogic in that leap? I didn’t at first. Missed it completely.

I own most of his albums, and I do not recall any rape jokes. Abortion jokes? Many.

I think it's like when John Denver showed up to defend free speech in music even though none of his lyrics were under scrutiny.

complexmath wrote:

I think that was his point. The fact that he was defending rape jokes even though he didn't actually use any in his routine made it obvious to him that rape culture was a real thing.

I thought that his point was that here he is, asking people to give (let's call it) 'the benefit of the doubt' to his inside experience as a comic when it comes to issues comics face with joke thieves and hecklers, while at the same time he wasn't giving that same benefit of the doubt to women talking about rape and rape culture, a subject where they have inside experience he does not:

But remember what I was talking about, in the first two sections of this? In the “Thievery” section and then the “Heckling” section? About how people only bring their own perceptions and experiences to bear when reacting to something? And, since they’re speaking honestly from their experience, they truly think they’re correct? Dismissive, even?

...

And just because I find rape disgusting, and have never had that impulse, doesn’t mean I can make a leap into the minds of women and dismiss how they feel day to day, moment to moment, in ways both blatant and subtle, from other men, and the way the media represents the world they live in, and from what they hear in songs, see in movies, and witness on stage in a comedy club.

My mind went to how it is routine to administer a morning after pill to rape victims. The article gives the benefit of the doubt that I am not willing to grant.

Rapes are a difficult enough crime to prove in the US, even more so in the Bible belt.

And Texas is a key offender that is indicative of the problem at large-women working against the interests of themselves and other women in elections. Texas has an average number of women to men, that slightly above 50%. But it also has a large retiree population. That is closer to 60 percent women, and much more politically active. Your mission, should you choose to accept it is to kill all of those old white bitches.

The f*ck? Though one of those reminded me of a Madonna video. But, who looks at that handbag ad thinking, I need me one of those? I think, Oh a new Texas Chainsaw movie is out, no wait it is for horrific handbags.

Jenkins, we have not really cornered the "Buffalo Bill" market, what do you got?